Praveen Kumar and Piyush Chawla picked three wickets each as Central Zone beat defending champions West Zone by six wickets in a lacklustre opening match of the Deodhar Trophy at M Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore on Friday.
Sent into bat, the Wasim Jaffer-led West Zone were bundled out for 98 in 29.1 overs. Mohammad Kaif's Central Zone hit up the required runs in 20.1 overs, losing four wickets.
Praveen ripped apart the top order, dismissing Yusuf Pathan (3), Ajinkya Rahane (10) and Parthiv Patel (0).
Five West Zone batsmen were back in the pavilion with only 39 runs on the board.
Chawla then joined the party, picking the scalps of Venugopala Rao (9), Abhishek Nayar (39) and Iqbal Abdulla (2).
Rao and Nayar put on 31 runs for the sixth wicket. Nayar, who top-scored for his side, hit Murali Kartik for a four and a six off successive deliveries in the 28th over of the match.
Though they lost three quick wickets towards the end of the innings, Central overhauled the target.
Brief scores: West Zone 98 all out in 29.1overs (Nayar 39, Rahane 10; Chawla 3/11, Praveen Kumar 3/18, Kartik 2/20, Sandeep Singh 1/21, R P Singh 1/22) vs Central Zone 99 for four in 20.1 overs (Naman Ozha 25, Faiz Fazal 24, Suresh Raina 18; Ajit Agarkar 2/35, Siddharth Trivedi 2/41).
